Global music revenue fell last year by some three per cent. Yes, three. That's because you never bought the copy of the Redjetson album you promised yourself. Bah. In total, the industry's revenue came in at around the $21bn mark.

The drop is attributable to the decline of physical sales, i.e. CD and records; downloads, though, tripled. $1.1bn was made from legal digital music sales, some increase on the $400m of 2004. These figures, by the way, come courtesy of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. We don't just make 'em up.

So far as big-selling albums go, Coldplay's X&Y was the success of '05, shifting eight million copies about the globe. In second place was The Emancipation Of Mimi by Mariah Carey, with 50 Cent's The Massacre third.

The amount of CDs and music DVDs sold fell by eight per cent. The world's largest market, the US, saw revenue fall by three per cent, a la the global trend.